WIML: Finding My Humble

It's the start of Week in My Life Linkup (WIML) hosted by Kathryn over at Team Whitaker. It's basically a week of posts with little insights into how your life works. And... if you miss a day, that's OKAY!

I don't know that I will want to remember this week specifically. I am safely passed the crazy foggy stage but not so far into "new normal I've got it figured out" stage. But since this is only M's nineteenth day in the big world there are most certainly moments I will probably forget and moments that I should really savor.

Today I coming to terms with something I should not forget. This is about my daily dose of humbling. It is not necessarily specific to today. But it did happen today. It happens every day.

C likes to look at the pictures on phones. My phone specifically, since it is 99% pictures of him. He is ever so modest and refers to this super fun activity as "Cute Boy Pictures." It is a request that comes up every day but is also a bribe to stop tantrums. If he's jumping on the bed while M is nursing, the easiest solution is handing over the phone and watching those adorable chubby toddler fingers scroll through all the pictures. He likes to narrate the process.

"Baby Sis-Sis!"

"Balloons. Mom. Balloons!"

"A Walrus!"

Mixed in with these toddler treasures are videos. Those are even more precious than the many amazing (most are not amazing) pictures. The first video you come to is C singing "It's A Small World" while he recreates the ride with his  counting bears. Through the gallery they pop up at random exposing little tidbits of our life.

But when you get to the pictures from our trip to see the walrus  interspersed in the pictures of walrus, orangutans and other creatures is a video from the dolphin show. We of course watch it every time we get there because C likes to watch the dolphins jump.

I hate the dolphin show video. I keep saying I am going to delete it from my phone. There are two reasons I hate it. First, the volume of the music at the dolphin show was loud so the volume of the video is also loud. And secondly, about 20 seconds into the video, I hiss at Husband (who was the one recording at the time) "Don't record, it'll waste the battery." Then the video stops abruptly.

Oh. It just makes my blood run cold. Here we were spending time away as a family like I had requested, Husband was just trying to capture some moments to bring home with us and I was concerned about the battery life on my phone. And I wasn't even nice about it.

So now, on a daily basis, I get to hear myself rudely proclaiming that the phone's battery was more precious than our time together. It might not seem all that bad to you. It really isn't me at my worst, it's just definitely not me at my best. That, actually, is the reason I haven't yet deleted from my phone. Because every time I listen to myself say "Don't record, it'll waste the battery" my heart is softened.

I get a little more patient with the toddler who won't eat anything but fruit and is overtired but won't sleep. (That would be as I am writing this. And by a little more patient I took a breath, said a prayer and didn't bellow his name to guilt him back into bed.)

I find a little more love for the man who married me by choice and four years later still hasn't decided he's sick of me. Even if I do snap at him in my weak moments.

So I leave the video on there, even though it makes me cringe, because I need to get over myself and love my family more. A daily dose of humble is a good thing my friends. It's the medicine that makes the sugar seem all that more sweet. And today in my humbled state I am spending the evening with my best girl and being thankful for her existence while my favorite two guys are off playing at the museum.